A microscope image of the genetically modified bacterias shows a number of diesel molecules which it is forming. (Source: CNN)

Biochemist Stephen del Cardayre is the vice president of research and development at LS9. He holds a vial of his company's prized bacteria. The brown fluid at the top of the vial is diesel that the bacteria excreted, mixed with water. (Source: CNN)

E. Coli is commonly found in feces, and the LS9 researchers have succeeded in a rather ironic goal -- genetically modifying the bacteria to excrete diesel fuel. After much research and genetic modification, LS9 says it has used a variety of common sugar metabolic pathways to force E. Coli to convert virtually any sugar-containing substance in part to carbon chains virtually indistinguishable with diesel.

The bacteria "poop" out this black gold, while using part of the sugar to fuel their growth and reproduction as well. The net result is that any carbon source can be turned into synthetic fuel by the economic bacteria.

Biochemist Stephen del Cardayre, LS9 vice president of research and development, says his company has come a long way. He states, "We started in my garage two years ago, and we're producing barrels today, so things are moving pretty quickly."

He explains the process of creating the microbes, stating, "So these are bacteria that have been engineered to produce oil. They started off like regular lab bacteria that didn't produce oil, but we took genes from nature, we engineered them a bit [and] put them into this organism so that we can convert sugar to oil."

While the microbes are currently only producing diesel fuel, they could easily be tuned to produce gasoline or jet fuel according to Mr. Cardayre. Best of all, the bacteria don't have to use simple sugars such as corn, a major criticism of the ethanol infrastructure. The increased demand for corn by the ethanol industry is accused of raising food prices. Instead they can use a variety of "foods" including sugar cane, landscaping waste, wheat straw, and wood chips. The microbes used are a "friendly" noninfectious type of E. Coli that lack the proteins needed to invade the human body, which some strains of E. Coli are capable of doing.

Robert McCormick, principal engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado remains skeptical of LS9's claims. He adds, "Scalability is really the critical issue. If you've got something that you can make work in a test tube, that's good, but you've got to be able to make it work on a very large scale to have an impact on our petroleum imports."

LS9 is not only confident they can scale the technology, but they also believe that their oil will be significant to the oil found in fossil fuel deposits. Typical oil deposits contain significant amounts of sulfur that get released into the atmosphere, creating acid rain which destroys forests, limestone, marble, and damages lake ecosystems. It also contains benzene, a carcinogen that can cause cancer even in very small quantities.

The E. Coli produced diesel has none of these unwanted extras, it's just pure black gold. Unlike ethanol, it can be pumped along existing infrastructure, LS9 is quick to point out.

While they hope to be entering commercial level production in the next couple years, they acknowledge that even if they continue their path of unlikely and rapid success, their technology is not a magical solution to the global energy crisis. Mr. Cardayre states, "I think that the answer to reducing our petroleum-import problem and reducing the carbon emissions from transportation is really threefold. It involves replacement fuels like biofuels, it involves using much more efficient vehicles than we use today, and it involves driving less."

He says that LS9's success and continued prospects are only thanks to constant collaboration by a diverse team of experts from many different professions. He continues, "The fun of the challenge from the science perspective is that you do have farmers and biologists and entomologists, and biochemists and chemical engineers, and process engineers and business people and investors all working to solve this, and it ranges anywhere from a political issue to a technical issue."

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You seem to be aware of the molecular implications... I have an issue to discuss with you.

I'm trying to conceptualize exactly how LS9 is managing to turn cellulose into diesel fuel. From what I found on their official site:

quote: LS9 has developed a new means of efficiently converting fatty acid intermediates into petroleum replacement products via fermentation of renewable sugars. LS9 has also discovered and engineered a new class of enzymes and their associated genes to efficiently convert fatty acids into hydrocarbons.

Also from the website:

quote: Starting from raw, natural sources of sugar such as sugar cane and cellulosic biomass , these renewable fuels will fundamentally change the biofuels landscape and set the stage for widespread product adoption and petroleum displacement.

There seems to be a discrepancy as far as the actual source of the fuel/hydrocarbon. Aren't fatty acids vastly vastly different from sugars? There seems to be fermentation involved... so they are converting some type of alcohol into a fatty acid intermediate? And then breaking that down? Sounds crazy. Cellulose as the starting material surprises me. It's a polysaccharide chock full of oxygen molecules -- even HELD TOGETHER by oxygen -- how in the world are they ending up with fatty acids and their long hydrocarbon chains???

I am sure you where not asking me but i was interested in the answer to your question as well and thought i might as well post it. I am not a chemist, but when i google on fatty acids i found a lot of websites.

Now you have to verify this yourself but you can find some information from this selection.

quote: Saturated fatty acids do not contain any double bonds or other functional groups along the chain. The term "saturated" refers to hydrogen, in that all carbons (apart from the carboxylic acid [-COOH] group) contain as many hydrogens as possible. In other words, the omega (?) end contains 3 hydrogens (CH3-), and each carbon within the chain contains 2 hydrogen atoms.

I woud say the hydrocarbons are stripped by some enzymes.And next other enzymes build these hydrocarbons to the chemical shape we need. Just like a manufacturer process.

quote: Novel fatty acids sugar esters for food and cosmetics Objectives Within the EC AIR research project AIR-CT94-2291 Production of sugar fatty acid esters from renewable agricultural resources: an integrated optimisation of enzymatic-purification processes and of surfactive properties, INPL developed an efficient enzymatic process for the synthesis of novel sugar esters based on the use of lipases. The carbohydrate surfactants, made of a hydrophilic sugar head group and a lipophilic fatty acid chain, constitute a novel family of non-ionic surfactants that can be used as detergents for washing purposes, as emulsifiers in food products and as active ingredients in personal care products such as shampoos, creams or soaps. Compared to chemically produced surfactants, enzymatically synthesised sugar esters show superiority in terms of product quality and purity, environmental compatibility and toxicological acceptability. Technical Approach The demonstration project aims at scaling up the enzymatic process for the production of the fatty acids sugar esters and to evaluate functional properties of the surfactants as food and cosmetic ingredients. First, the technical viability of the process based on the use of an immobilised lipase will be verified on sugar esters made from different sugars and fatty acids. Second, the physico-chemical and industrial properties of the sugar esters are to be evaluated in three selected application areas: cosmetics, bakery and ice cream. A major objective is to determine how these sugar esters compare with chemically synthesised surfactants, either alone or in combination. The production costs must also be established to further assess their market potential. Expected Results The production of kilogram quantities of sugar esters. In order to cover a wide range of HLB values (hydrophilic-lipophilic balance) of industrial interest, sugar esters will be produced, made from different sugars, fatty acids and vegetable oils. The evaluation of the physico-chemical characteristic, the biodegradability and the ecotoxicological properties of the sugar esters. The cost analysis of the new products as a function of composition and purity. The evaluation of the industrial properties of the sugar esters. It will first involve a general screening of the sugar esters as cosmetic, bakery and ice cream ingredients. For the most interesting of them, more extended evaluation of properties will be performed, using pilot plant production facilities and standard test procedures.